Donald Trump’s crypto initiative, World Liberty Financial, went live on Sept. 1 with a market valuation above $7.4 billion, sparking heavy trading in its opening hours.

According to CoinMarketCap data, WLFI climbed 13% to $0.2525 shortly after launch, while its trading volume has already surpassed $1.8 billion across centralized and decentralized exchanges.

Notably, this rush of activity spilled over into the broader market.

According to Milk Road data, Ethereum gas fees, which hovered near zero before the token’s debut, surged to more than 60 gwei as traders competed to settle WLFI transactions on the chain.

This spike highlighted how much interest the Trump-linked token has generated among retail traders and institutions.

WLFI token

In a Sept.1 blog post, the World Liberty Financial team stated that the launch introduced more than 24.6 billion WLFI into circulation.

Out of this supply, about 10 billion tokens were retained by the project’s parent company, World Liberty Financial, Inc. Another 7.78 billion tokens were assigned to Alt5 Sigma Corporation, giving it close to eight percent of the total supply as part of its treasury strategy.

Nearly 2.9 billion tokens were directed toward exchange activity to maintain liquidity and support early marketing. At the same time, more than 4 billion were distributed to public sale participants with an initial 20 percent unlocked at launch.

The team stated that the remaining 76 billion tokens are “subject to vesting schedules or are otherwise locked.” These tokens belong to its strategic partners, the project’s team, and its treasury.

Trump Jr. framed the token as central to the project’s long-term mission, emphasizing that WLFI is designed as a governance layer rather than a speculative instrument.

Meanwhile, Tron founder Justin Sun, who publicly aligned himself with the project, reinforced this position by pledging not to sell his unlocked holdings.

He also announced that to mark the launch, USD1 circulation on Tron would expand to $200 million, linking the success of WLFI with broader stablecoin growth on his blockchain.

Mentioned in this article

Bitcoin analyst and investor Mark Moss argues that Bitcoin treasury companies are positioning themselves for history’s biggest wealth transfer, following a sophisticated playbook for capturing value and managing volatility. In other words: “using gas pipes to fund your electric future.”

Bitcoin treasury companies: history’s most obvious abritrage

He compares Bitcoin treasury companies (firms holding large bitcoin balances and building financial products around them) to smart factory owners of the 1910s, who installed electric wires despite having working gas pipes.

While most people thought they were wasting money and called their approach foolish, these owners were able to leverage existing infrastructure to pay for future needs.

When old technology and new technology exist simultaneously over a 10-20 year window, Moss argues that those running both systems, like Bitcoin treasury companies, emerge victorious:

“These factories didn’t wait for gas to disappear. They used profits from gas-powered production to install electric infrastructure. They looked inefficient. Redundant. Stupid. They were actually positioning for the most obvious transition in history.”

That’s exactly what corporations like Strategy are doing: extracting value from the existing system of debt and equity and transferring it into the new system: Bitcoin.

“Bitcoin treasury companies are doing the EXACT same thing… running history’s most obvious arbitrage.”

Moss highlights the strategic flexibility of Bitcoin treasury companies to issue equity, raise capital, and leverage structural advantages unique to this asset class, positioning them for gains far beyond traditional tech or financial stocks.

He points out that savvy operators in this sector blend balance sheet strength with deep risk management, making them well-equipped to weather volatility and even exploit it for outsized performance.

Market sentiment remains cautious

Despite Moss’s bullish stance, market sentiment remains wary. Bitcoin treasury companies like Strategy are trading at just a 1.6x multiple on their Bitcoin holdings, a stark contrast to the S&P 500’s average price-to-earnings ratio, which sits at 30x. The gap is so pronounced that it defies conventional logic, as The Bitcoin Therapist pointed out:

“Not a f**king chance. Market is wrong.”

Recent price action only exacerbates these tensions. As of August 2025, Bitcoin hit a record high above $124,000, yet many Bitcoin treasury stocks failed to keep pace, with some trading flat or down amid $1 billion in leveraged liquidations and more than $290 million in ETF outflows.

The market’s apparent mispricing, punishing innovation with discount multiples, stands in sharp contradiction with the risk appetite normally seen for tech and growth stocks. Is the spread temporary, or is the market missing the forest for the trees? Relying on gas pipes to fuel an electric future?

Alpha Centauri, part of the three-star system closet to our own, is often posed in science fiction as humanity’s first hop into the beyond—or perhaps its first meeting of the minds with alien intelligences. For the first time, scientists have strong evidence that Alpha Centauri A has a planet in orbit, a gas giant about twice as far from its star as Earth is from the sun. The observations are from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.

If confirmed, the planet would be the closest to Earth that orbits in the habitable zone of a Sun-like star. However, because the planet candidate is a gas giant, scientists say it would not support life as we know it.

“With this system being so close to us, any exoplanets found would offer our best opportunity to collect data on planetary systems other than our own. Yet, these are incredibly challenging observations to make, even with the world’s most powerful space telescope, because these stars are so bright, close, and move across the sky quickly,” said Charles Beichman, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute at Caltech’s IPAC astronomy center, co-first author on the new papers. “Webb was designed and optimized to find the most distant galaxies in the universe. The operations team at the Space Telescope Science Institute had to come up with a custom observing sequence just for this target, and their extra effort paid off spectacularly.”

Here’s a quote from Aniket Sanghi of Caltech, co-first author of the papers covering the research:

“If confirmed, the potential planet seen in the Webb image of Alpha Centauri A would mark a new milestone for exoplanet imaging efforts. Of all the directly imaged planets, this would be the closest to its star seen so far. It’s also the most similar in temperature and age to the giant planets in our solar system, and nearest to our home, Earth,” he says. “Its very existence in a system of two closely separated stars would challenge our understanding of how planets form, survive, and evolve in chaotic environments.”

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, scheduled to launch next year or 2027, has dedicated hardware for observing exoplanets in visible spectra, hopefully “yielding unique insights on the size and reflectivity of the planet.”

Context from Phil Plait:

The star has been a target for planet hunters for a long time (in fact with another astronomer I proposed using STIS, a camera on Hubble, to look for one back in the 90s, but it got turned down as being too speculative, which, fair). In 2021 astronomers announced they found a candidate planet orbiting Alpha Cen A using the Very Large Telescope (or VLT), but the detection wasn’t strong enough to make a confident claim.

The closest known exoplanets are those orbiting Proxima Centauri, a red dwarf in the same system. Don’t get your hopes up: “Proxima Centauri is a flare star with intense emission of electromagnetic radiation that could strip an atmosphere off the planet.”

Previously:
• ‘Young’ exoplanet may end up a super-Earth
• Watch: history of exoplanet observations as generative music
• Potentially habitable exoplanet: The fine print
• Which is the most boring exoplanet?

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and researcher Anders Elowsson have introduced a proposal to overhaul how users pay for transactions on the network.

The plan centers around a unified multidimensional fee market, designed to simplify fee calculation and improve economic efficiency across the Ethereum ecosystem.

The proposal arrives during a period of low network fees. Over the past week, Ethereum’s median gas price has consistently remained under 1 Gwei, marking the lowest levels this year.

This context emphasizes the need for a more adaptable and efficient fee structure to support future growth.

Multidimensional fee market

At the proposal’s core is a single max_fee value users set when submitting a transaction. This fee would apply across all network resources, such as computation, storage, and calldata, instead of requiring users to assign different fee limits to each.

By making max_fee fungible across these dimensions, Ethereum can allocate the fee “dynamically” to whichever resource needs it most, optimizing capital usage.

According to the proposal:

“The fee market is further unified in terms of a single update fraction under a single fee update mechanism, generalized reserve pricing, and a gas normalization that retains current percentage ranges while keeping the price stable whenever a gas limit changes.”

Currently, Ethereum operates with separate fee systems: EIP-1559 governs regular gas, while EIP-4844 covers blob gas. This proposal aims to consolidate both mechanisms under the EIP-4844 framework, providing better control over long-term resource consumption.

The multidimensional fee market design allows Ethereum to better adapt to temporary demand spikes while maintaining price stability across various resources.

The first step in the rollout would be to apply this system to calldata, which often affects transaction propagation speed. From there, additional EVM resources could be added over time, using mechanisms that maintain backward compatibility.

Ultimately, this proposal would simplify the user experience and enable more scalability in the future. It would also consolidate fee structures and enable more flexible pricing, laying the groundwork for more predictable and efficient network activity.

Mentioned in this article

Ethereum’s throughput ticked up on Sunday as more validators signalled their support for increasing Ethereum’s gas limit to 45 million units, which will reduce transaction fees and enable improved network scaling.  

Ethereum’s gas limit rose to over 37.3 million units on Sunday, according to Etherscan, up almost 3% from levels late last week, while several blocks were proposed with higher gas limits.

The latest gas limit increase represents the first significant climb since February, when it was raised from 30 million to 36 million.

Improved transaction throughput

Higher gas limits mean more transaction throughput on Ethereum’s layer-1 network, and validators can automatically adjust the limit by about 0.1% per block when they signal support for changes.

Ethereum throughput ticked up to just below 18 transactions per second over the weekend, according to Chainspect. It has also risen since the last gas limit increase when TPS was around 15. 

Validators agree to “pump the gas”

The weekend gas limit increase came as nearly half of all staked Ether (ETH) is now signaling support to raise the gas limit to 45 million or higher through a grassroots “pump the gas” campaign.

“Almost exactly 50% of stake are voting to increase the L1 gas limit to 45 million,” observed Vitalik Buterin on Sunday.

Currently, 47.2% of staked validators are in favor of higher gas limits, according to GasLimits.pics.

Pump the gas 

The gas limit refers to the maximum amount of gas spent on executing transactions or smart contracts in each block. Gas is the Ether fee required to conduct a transaction or execute a smart contract on the network.

Ethereum developers launched the “pump the gas” campaign in March 2024 to initially raise the Ethereum gas limit from 30 million to 40 million, which they claimed would reduce transaction fees on layer 1.

Buterin noted that recent Geth, the most popular Ethereum node client, team improvements make these scale increases safer with new archive node optimizations.

Related: More than 50% of validators signal to increase ETH gas limit

Ether activity and price continue higher

Ethereum network activity has also increased in recent months, with an uptick in daily transactions from around 1.1 million in April to current levels around 1.4 million, according to Etherscan. 

The uptick in network activity has correlated with an increase in price, with the asset gaining a whopping 54% over the past month. 

Ether topped $3,800 briefly in a seven-month high on Sunday as corporate treasuries and exchange-traded funds continue to load up. 

Magazine: Outrage as $1.8B ‘DGCX’ crypto scam ringleader mocks victims: Asia Express

]]> https://earlybirdsinvest.com/ethereum-is-scaling-tps-gas-limit-up-as-validators-back-45m-target/feed/ 0 48821 https://earlybirdsinvest.com/vitalik-buterin-proposes-to-cap-gas-usage-per-ethereum-transaction-to-boost-zkvm-compatibility-security/ https://earlybirdsinvest.com/vitalik-buterin-proposes-to-cap-gas-usage-per-ethereum-transaction-to-boost-zkvm-compatibility-security/#respond Sun, 06 Jul 2025 23:36:50 +0000 https://earlybirdsinvest.com/vitalik-buterin-proposes-to-cap-gas-usage-per-ethereum-transaction-to-boost-zkvm-compatibility-security/

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and Toni Wahrstätter, a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, have put forth a proposal that will cap the maximum gas a single transaction can use. The proposal, EIP 7983, claims:

“By implementing this limit, Ethereum can enhance its resilience against certain DoS [Denial of Service attack] vectors, improve network stability, and provide more predictability to transaction processing costs.”

The latest proposal is a modified version of EIP 7825, which was introduced in November last year but has since stagnated.

The proposal will limit gas usage for individual transactions to 16.77 million gas

The proposal aims to enforce a maximum limit of 16.77 million gas for any single transaction, nearly half of the 30 million gas limit proposed in EIP 7825. This limit, according to Buterin and Wahrstätter, will be applicable irrespective of the block gas limit set by miners or validators.

Implementation of this proposal will see transactions specifying a gas limit above 16.77 million gas get invalidated. This means that during transaction validation, transactions exceeding the gas limit will be rejected and excluded from the transaction pool. Similarly, during block validation, any block that contains a transaction that exceeds the set gas limit will become invalid.

Buterin and Wahrstätter’s chosen 16.77 million gas limit will provide a “balance between allowing complex transactions while maintaining predictable execution bounds,” as per the proposal. The authors added:

“This value enables most current use cases, including contract deployments and advanced DeFi interactions, while ensuring consistent performance characteristics.”

When implemented, the proposal will require users and decentralized applications (dApps) to split transactions with higher gas limits into smaller operations. However, Buterin and Wahrstätter expect the limit to impact a minimal number of users and dApps since most current transactions fall well below the proposed limit.

Why setting a transaction gas limit matters

Ethereum’s current architecture allows transactions to theoretically consume the entire gas limit of a block. This architecture carries several risks.

For instance, allowing a single transaction to consume most or all of the block gas limit can make it easier for miscreants to execute DoS attacks. In DoS attacks, bad actors try to overwhelm a network through a barrage of spam transactions. This causes the network to fail to provide service to genuine users.

According to the proposal, the absence of a transaction gas limit can also lead to uneven load distribution and affect network stability.

Having variable gas usage can also cause an imbalance in load distribution across transactions in a block. Furthermore, high-gas transactions also cause longer block verification times, which can impact user experience.

Benefits of setting a transaction gas limit

According to Buterin and Wahrstätter, limiting the gas usage limit of single transactions can help reduce the risk of single-transaction DoS attacks. Essentially, the limit will set a guardrail that prevents malicious actors from using the network’s bandwidth through large spam transactions.

The limit would also ensure that gas is allocated fairly across transactions in a block, the proposal stated. The cap is also expected to make the validation of blocks “more predictable and uniform.”

The most important benefit, however, would be enhanced compatibility with zero-knowledge virtual machines (zkVMs). Encouraging transactions with hefty gas limits to be broken up into smaller chunks “allows better participation in distributed proving systems,” and enables “more predictable zkVM circuit design,” the proposal stated.

Mentioned in this article

Canadian agricultural firm AgriFORCE Growing Systems Ltd. has launched an initiative to use stranded gas to power 120 Bitcoin mining rigs, which the company says it plans to expand.

The site, located in Berwyn, Alberta, and launched in partnership with energy provider BlueFlare Energy, draws in 425 kilowatts (kW) for 32 petahashes per second (PH/s) of computing power, AgriFORCE said on Tuesday. 

The site will use so-called stranded gas, natural gas that can’t be immediately taken to market as it’s either not economically viable to mine or can’t be physically reached by the equipment needed to extract it.

AgriFORCE also signed a binding letter of intent with BlueFlare to open two more sites in the Alberta region in Oyen and Hinton, which will replicate the model used at its Berwyn site.

“We don’t wait for permits or grid upgrades — we convert gas into compute in weeks, not years,” AgriFORCE CEO Jolie Kahn said.

Related: Amazon to invest $13B in Australian AI data center infrastructure

AgriFORCE’s Bitcoin Strategy

AgriFORCE said it has already mined 7 Bitcoin (BTC), worth approximately $735,000, from its operations in Alberta and Ohio.

The Canadian firm could keep as much as half of the BTC it mines in its Bitcoin treasury, while the other half will be used for expanding its operations.

The firm said it could use up to 50% of the money it raises as capital to directly buy Bitcoin.

AgriFORCE stock reaction

Shares in AgriFORCE (AGRI) rose by 1.85% on Tuesday and ended the trading session at $1.10. However, AgriFORCE’s stock is down more than 53% year-to-date, according to Google Finance.

During the fiscal year ending 2024, AgriFORCE’s revenue saw an increase of 317% year-over-year, while its net profit increased more than 66% during the same period.

Renewable energy used for mining

With the cost of mining Bitcoin going up, miners will likely look at alternatives to keep their costs low.

A report from Bitcoin mining research firm TheMinerMag indicates that the cost to produce a single BTC stood at $64,000 in the first quarter of this year. The firm expects this cost to increase to $70,000 sometime during the quarter ending June 2025.

Earlier this year, a report highlighted that miners’ reliance on traditional coal-based sources of electricity is dwindling, while on the other hand, miners are increasingly adopting renewable energy, which is growing at an average rate of 5.8% yearly.

Magazine: Arthur Hayes doesn’t care when his Bitcoin predictions are totally wrong

Feniix Energy, an energy firm based in Latin America, has completed a $75 million acquisition of a live oil and gas operation using blockchain tokenization, according to a statement shared with CryptoSlate on June 17.

Global Settlement, a blockchain firm specializing in real-world assets (RWAs), executed the deal through its GSX Protocol.

The protocol enabled instant settlements, reduced counterparty risk, and lowered transaction fees. It also introduced full transparency throughout the funding and ownership process.

Notably, stablecoins were used to settle the transaction, removing the need for traditional banking intermediaries. This marked a pivotal move in financing capital-intensive projects using decentralized finance tools.

The acquisition was structured entirely through tokenized debt and equity. An unnamed leading commodity trading company provided the debt portion, making this the first known instance of a fully tokenized capital structure used to purchase an active energy asset.

Feniix Energy’s Director, Alejandro Uribe, described the deal as a milestone in energy financing. He said that blockchain brought unmatched speed, visibility, and trust features that were often missing in traditional financing.

He said:

“Our collaboration with Global Settlement demonstrates how innovation can bridge traditional finance and the crypto economy, unlocking substantial value for our stakeholders.”

Global Settlement founder Kyle Sonlin added that the deal aimed to showcase the real-world benefits of tokenization. He emphasized that on-chain infrastructure helped streamline capital flows and reduce operational costs.

Industry observers see this acquisition as a breakthrough moment for blockchain adoption in traditional sectors. The use of tokenized capital in live infrastructure deals signals growing confidence in blockchain as a financing tool for institutional-grade projects.

The timing of this deal aligns with rising momentum in the RWA space. A June 16 report by CoinGecko noted that the tokenized treasuries market surged 544.8% in 2024, reaching an all-time high of $5.6 billion by April 2025.